LA Weekly is now taking poetry submissions. Interested in having your work posted right here on our arts blog? Send previously unpublished poems along with an image to go with it to poetry@laweekly.com. Check out today's poem after the jump.
Monday the new Millennium
By Alejandra Castillo
line them up
behind the yellow line
one by one
cocky vehicle faces
sharp and cold
full of it-
metal
line them up
behind the yellow line
the stop too often bypassed
as the red light
reflected on his glasses…
line them up
with their silver foreheads
burning below
the hungry California sun
it's five o' clock
line them up
it don't matter
the day's not over
there are still a million things to do
and surely
something
somewhere
has got to get done
so line them up
they won't go hungry
there's plenty of gas left
the things driving them
have had plenty
of coffee
slow them down
in the landscape
of shrilling traffic lights
it is almost night
but in urban context
clocks matter and don't matter much
here in Los Angeles
as always
something
somewhere
has got to get done
Monday is never over
it goes on forever
twisted into vicious cycles
so it lasts a year
a decade
a millennium
Monday a millennium
line them up by yellow lines
clocks sing the numbers
but seconds don't matter
when our hectic city lives
feel as the centuries they truly are
oh who will ever notice
that somewhere in the horizon
a yellow sun-
neglected,
is fading
into orange lines?
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